Plastic Shaman Author Annette McGivney

📆 Tuesday, September 22 | 4:00-5PM

📍 at Peregrine Book Company

Author Annette McGivney will be discussing Plastic Shaman: The True Story of a Deadly Self-Help Retreat and America's Misguided Quest for Wellness. Joining us to moderate the discussion is author R.E. Burrillo, author of the recent American Archaeology.

Purchase and reserve a copy of Plastic Shaman here

A spiritual quest turns into a fatal disaster in this gripping true crime investigation of the wellness industry.
"A fascinating, deeply personal investigation."
--JON KRAKAUER, Under the Banner of Heaven
In October 2009, more than fifty people attended a $10,000-per-person wellness
retreat led by a celebrity self-help guru. For these enlightenment seekers, their time in Sedona, Arizona, culminated in a fake Native American sweat lodge ceremony. Three of them would not make it out alive.

This tragedy exposes the dangerous truth about the booming $2 trillion wellness industry where promises of spiritual awakening and financial success often mask dangerous practices underpinned by cultural appropriation and commodification of nature. Journalist Annette McGivney explores this world, exposing the manipulation and greed that allow charismatic influencers to prey on vulnerable people in search of happiness and healing--no matter the cost.

Annette McGivney is an award-winning investigative journalist and author based in Cortez, Colorado. Plastic Shaman is her sixth book. Her previous book, Pure Land, about the M**der of Tomomi Hanamure in Grand Canyon, won the National Outdoor Book Award in 2018. Pure Land was the debut selection for Outside magazine’s book club in 2017 and named by the magazine on a list of “outdoor books that shaped the last decade.”

Annette is a frequent contributor to the Guardian, Outside and Arizona Highways; her articles focus on Southwest culture, the environment and Indigenous issues. She is a professor emeritus in Journalism at Northern Arizona University where she taught for two decades.